


Bright Tapestry

by RobinRedR



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark Comedy, Dehumanization, Everything Hurts, M/M, Medical Torture, Titan Eren Yeager, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 13:38:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2549513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinRedR/pseuds/RobinRedR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are everywhere. They infiltrate society on all levels, hiding behind friendly smiles and high-school diplomas, fooling even friends and family that they are entirely normal and entirely harmless. But Levi and the rest of the Recon Corps Medical Unit are determined to prove the truth: These beings aren't <em>human</em>.</p><p>And then there's subject E-05 with its iridescent eyes full of danger, who can make flowers grow in Levi's palm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Tapestry

**Author's Note:**

> _tapetum lucidum_ /təˈpiːtəm/ (Latin: "bright tapestry")

“Levi.”

Erwin always had a strange way of pronouncing Levi’s name, drawing out the last syllable and rolling the ‘L’ so that it came out sounding more like ‘Rivaille’.

“No.” The said Levi scowled darkly and pushed past his boss. “I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

Erwin chuckled under his breath and followed Levi patiently into the break room where the shorter man was angrily punching his money into the coffee machine. Espresso, black. Black like his soul. (He would have added some sugar, but Erwin was  _right there._ )

“We brought in a new subject last night,” Erwin stated conversationally, setting a stack of files on the table and linking his hands casually behind his back. Levi huffed. His shift ended at ten at night on Mondays, but the Recon Corps Medical Unit worked around the clock.

“Fascinating. And why should I care?” Levi snatched his coffee from the machine and took an irritable sip, burning his tongue in the process. He had no patience when it came to coffee; sue him. And get him a fucking ice pack. Levi leant against the wall then and met Erwin’s calculating gaze... Oh no. That look  _always_ spelt trouble.

“It was a particularly difficult case. Hanji’s entire squad had to hold it down to administer the sedative.” Erwin smiled. That was a fucking fake smile. “All two hundred milliliters of it.”

Levi raised an eyebrow at that. In his experience, Hanji alone was enough to subdue most subjects. “So it’s a shitty brat with an extra dose of shittiness. I fail to see what this has got to do with me.”

“I’m taking you off the B-09 case.”

Levi slammed his half-empty plastic cup onto the table so hard it sloshed all over his fingers. “You  _can’t._ ”

“Your experience is of better use elsewhere, Levi.”

Fuck no.  _Fuck_ no. Erwin wouldn’t dare. Levi seethed, eyes narrowed at Erwin’s cold smile. “We’re almost finished with the process. One more week, and the damn file will be closed. We already decided this.” Levi felt something snap inside of him when Erwin ducked his head with the most insincere apologetic look he had ever seen. God fucking dammit, it was way too early in the morning for this shit. “No. I refuse. You take me off this case now and my name won’t appear on the study; I need this on my CV. I’m not getting out of this hell hole otherwise.”

“That case is a waste of your time; it’s only a Class B. Mike was on your team, was he not? I’ll promote him to squad leader. They’ll be in good hands.” As if Levi gave a flying fuck whether they were in good hands or not. Erwin merely picked up the stack of files again, sliding a new one smoothly across the table. The cover clean and untouched. A brand new case. “You start today.”

“No.”

Erwin paused, one of his stupid fucking eyebrows slowly climbing up his forehead. “Are you disobeying a direct order, Ackerman?”

Oh, sometimes Levi  _hated_ this man.

His lips thinned into a hard line, but Erwin nodded as if Levi had spoken all the same. His silence was apparently answer enough. “Good. You can pick your own team, though I suggest collaborating with Doctor Zoë.” He flipped over the front page of the file and Levi caught sight of the grinning face of a teenager; brown hair, tan skin, somewhat average. School photo, probably. Ah… not ‘teenager’, Levi mentally corrected himself. These things were no longer human. Just test subjects.

“Say hello to E-05, Levi,” the fucker said far too cheerfully, then spun on his heel and left, leaving Levi with a cold coffee, a new file, and the most pissed off expression anyone had ever seen on his face since… ever.

 

 

His footsteps echoed on the cold tile floors as he descended to the lower level, the elevator rumbling quietly behind him. There were no windows here, everything air-locked. Massive, intricate lock systems on every single double door that Levi passed. This floor was reserved for the Class D and E subjects, and Levi fucking hated it here.

Doctor Hanji Zoë’s excited voice floated down the hallway as Levi reluctantly approached, disembodied and eerie as it was, separated by a thick metal door. He accidentally crumpled the file in his hand. Before he could type in the key, the doors burst open and a wild blur shot out.

“Good  _morning_  my grumpy little midget!” sang a lightly-accented voice. “I saw you coming on the security cams and I  _just got Erwin’s memo;_ we’re on the same team now, Levi!”

“Frankly, we’re really not,” he grumbled under his breath, stepping away from the bubbling energy that radiated from their presence. That stumped Hanji for a split second, before they flashed a knowing grin.

“Ha ha, very funny. How exciting is this, though?” They grabbed Levi’s wrist and tugged him after them into Hanji’s lair, otherwise known as the control room. Yes, there were the aforementioned security cams. Fucking creepy. Levi sometimes did questionable things in his office; he didn’t want a shitty four eyes spying on him.

“So I was thinking…”

“You were thinking nothing,” Levi snapped, cutting Hanji off mid-word. “This lovely new arrangement is  _really_ not in my favor, courtesy of Erwin,” he spat the name, “so if you want me to be somewhat courteous for the next four weeks you will refrain from being a little shit. You—” he pointed sharply at the nervous-looking man at Hanji’s elbow “—You know how to operate the Machine?”

The man shot a worried look in Hanji’s direction and then nodded uncertainly. Levi scanned his nametag – oh right, this was the infamous Moblit. The only man who’d ever been able to put up with this madwoman for any extended period of time. “Fine. Hanji, go find Petra and her annoying boytoy, and then we can get to work.”

Hanji beamed at him, but then hesitated. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?” Levi scoffed. “How many do we need?”

They blinked at him slowly. “We-el. Let me show you the cell, yeah?” Hanji spun on their heel and loped off down the corridor, not even checking to see if Levi was following. He groaned internally, then brushed past Moblit and trotted after them, slipping in through the sliding doors before they closed before him.

They neared the cell, tagged perfectly with an LED nameplate –  _E-05_  – like all patients here were. A wrought iron barred gate and an additional wall of smooth impenetrable glass separated the two humans from the contents of the cell.

“So that’s the little brat who will ruin my career,” Levi breathed quietly. The huddled figure in the corner snapped its head up at the sound of his voice, catching Levi in a pair of luminous eyes. Enormous, unblinking eyes that were stuck somewhere between green and blue and gold, depending on how the light hit them; unearthly and oddly— Well, Levi didn’t finish that thought. They weren’t human, that was for sure. And that ridiculous school photo on his file couldn’t possibly hope to capture their essence.

There was a tense moment of silence in which no one moved a muscle; then the creature stood up, slowly, and approached the glass. Levi was slightly taken aback by the fury that blazed out of those unnatural eyes.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” it hissed suddenly, fear and anger mingling in its stricken voice as it pressed a palm against the barrier. “You have no right to do this! Let me out of here!”

Hanji tutted on Levi’s left, tapping their fingers teasingly against the glass. “Ah, so today you’re going to talk? Well that’s an improvement! See here: last night it sliced Moblit’s arm open through his lab coat, and I had to get Nanaba to help me sedate it. It’s absolutely fascinating! Just look at it. I’ve never seen such passion in anyone’s gaze before, whether human or not.”

Well, Levi could certainly agree with that one. He hadn’t been able to look away once.

“I sure would like to take a closer look at them, but until we know whether it can regenerate its body parts, I can’t carry out a dissection. Bah! Such a shame.” Hanji pouted. “You know, Levi, we should definitely – Levi? Hey!”

Hanji shoved him lightly in the arm, and he jerked. “What?”

“We don’t know anything about this type yet. And it’s a Class E. We need to be careful.” Hanji huffed, as if those words were a personal affront. They probably were; Hanji was  _never_ careful. This is why Moblit was always half a step from having a heart-attack. “But… I think… Its power may lie in its eyes; that’s what I came up with yesterday. So don’t look at them for too long.”

Levi blinked. “Its power? They can do that?” But Levi knew the answer even as the question spilled from his lips; he’d been working here long enough as it was. How else could these monsters infiltrate society on all levels, fool even their friends and family into thinking they were entirely normal and harmless?

“Mind control, memory alterations… we don’t have enough data to know for sure. But we need to be wary.” Hanji huffed again, shooting a side-long glance at the cell. This was why no one was allowed to touch subjects without gloves, a mask; layers of protective gear. They’d never before been told to avoid eye-contact, but with this one… it wouldn’t hurt to tread carefully.

“Alright. Got it. Anything else you care to mention before we get started?” This fucking brat. He was going to make it  _pay_  for getting Levi bumped off the B-09 case. Though he couldn’t help but feel a slight tremor of excitement at the thought of working on this new case; none of his previous subjects had shown such potential. This might just be the breakthrough they’d all been waiting for.

(And dealing with this fucker and its dangerous, blazing eyes would sure be a nice change in scenery from the sniveling little Class B case whose greatest worry was that the meal rations were not depleted each day.)

“Excuse me! You assholes, I’m literally standing  _right here!”_ The subject slammed its fist into the glass wall and even Hanji flinched. “Why are you doing this?!”

Levi shot it a look of supreme distaste, keeping his eyes downcast despite his mild curiosity. The subject’s question went unanswered. “What the fuck is it wearing?” Levi snapped, upon noticing the prim, pleated dress shirt and pants which clearly read ‘white boy preppy school uniform’. “I thought we decreed that all subjects should be clad in the standard attire.”

“Ah… oops.” Hanji shrugged. “It was giving us so much trouble yesterday I kind of forgot?”

The door opened suddenly, and Moblit entered with Petra and Auruo in tow. Levi greeted them warmly with an irritated curl of his lips. “You two, make yourself useful and get it the fuck out of those clothes.” He jabbed a finger towards the glass. “Then bring it to the testing room. Moblit, go set up the examination table.”

Petra rolled her eyes at him. “Nice to see you too, Levi. I had a lovely night, thank you for asking. Would you like me to help with the new case? Of course, since you’re being so sweet this fine morning.”

Hanji snorted an unattractive laugh into their sleeve, and Levi shot them all instant-death glares. What the hell. He was supposed to be their  _Squad Leader._ Where had the concept of ‘respect for your superiors’ even gone?

“Cut him some slack, guys; he just got kicked off the Potato-girl case like, one day before it was supposed to be finished,” Hanji surprised him by saying. Not like he needed their support. All of them could just go fuck themselves. Levi was so fucking done.

“I  _said,_ you can  _make yourselves useful_ by getting the brat prepped and in the testing room in the next  _three minutes,_ or I will end up strapping one of you to the examination table instead,” he snapped violently, then turned on his heel and stomped out of the room. He heard Auruo making some snide remark about ‘prepping’ and ‘getting it out of its clothes’ before the door slammed shut behind him.

Levi stood there for a moment, took a deep breath, and then ran a hand quickly through his fringe in an uncharacteristic break of composure. Okay, so maybe he’d been a little bit too harsh just then… he was just having a bad day, alright. It had nothing to do with the way the test subject had continued to pound and yell against the glass while they’d all stood there plainly ignoring it, making a fucking joke about Levi’s rude manner of speech. God fucking dammit.

_Get a hold of yourself, Levi._

He crossed to the end of the hall into his personal supply room on this floor, spending the next five minutes in a mindless state, falling into his usual routine before testing began. Clean his hands. In between his fingers, under his nails. Rub the disinfectant soap in well till the lather runs off his skin. Comb out his hair and then tuck it carefully into a hair net. Get out a new mask and strap it on. Make sure it is airtight. Get the goggles. Adjust them to his exact head shape for maximum comfort. Wash his hands again. And another time, just to be sure. Slip on the gloves and make sure they fit perfectly. Button up his lab coat and check that everything has been returned to its proper place. Cross through the automatic door into the testing room.

Levi’s mind was blissfully blank by the time he joined the rest of his squad, all of them decked out in similar attire. He barely even registered the panicked screams from the subject, all the  _no no, please, what the hell just let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong, please, you are all insane, you’re absolutely fucking insane_ that he’d heard countless times before.

“Gag it,” he ordered, and soon even that mantra was silenced to nothing more than a muffled whine. It took them longer than expected to hold it down and strap its flailing arms and legs to the table; Levi was kicked right in the solar plexus and Petra had her goggles knocked off by a stray limb, but eventually they managed to secure it with thick leather bands across its wrists, hips, thighs and ankles.

“Jesus Christ,” Auruo groaned, making as if to run a hand through his hair before he remembered he was wearing a net. “It’s like a bloody demon.”

Levi said nothing, mostly because he was still recovering from having the wind knocked out of him, but in that moment he couldn’t agree more. He approached the head of the beast and glared down at it. The hatred in those eyes was enough to permeate the entire room. Fuck.

He looked away quickly, remembering Hanji’s warning.

The standard procedure followed quickly thereafter. The five of them had never worked together as a team before, but they quickly fell into an easy dynamic that consisted of efficient work with minimal verbal communication. They were all well-seasoned researchers, after all, and therefore well acquainted with the routine. Hanji took care of the head because they were, after all, an ophthalmologist by profession, and hissed at Levi when he attempted to swing the slit-lamp over. Okay then.

Moblit helped her by examining the subject’s ears, nose and throat. A job that, frankly, Levi was eager to pass on, while Petra and Auruo examined its body thoroughly for any injuries or abnormalities, checking all visible bodily functions and reflex arcs. Levi, for his part, kept his gloved hands out of the mess by focusing on the auscultatory aspects of the procedure: he’d always been more interested in the inner workings of the body anyway.

Heart rate, breathing rate, all sorts of figures were jotted down in his trusty notebook, and he was pleased with how smoothly things were going so far. That is until Hanji squealed, dropping their ophthalmoscope to the ground in a loud clatter. Apparently the subject’s pupils had finished dilating due to the drops, and Hanji had found something they liked.

“Levi! Come look at this! How fascinating!” Hanji jumped around in a circle, then dropped to the ground and crawled after the missing device. Levi snapped at them to go put on a fresh pair of gloves before continuing.

They thrust the ophthalmoscope into his reluctant hands, arms fluttering about wildly and a stream of incomprehensible filth spewing from their lips. “I thought you told me not to look into its eyes, shitty glasses.” They bounced off towards the wall past a startled Petra and flipped off the light switch, swathing the room in near-darkness.

“Briefly won’t hurt. You’ve got to see this though. So far, none of the previous subjects have shown any distinct non-human characteristics prior to transformation, but look at those eyes!” Their glasses shone disturbingly in the dim light coming from the emergency floor path lighting.

Stifling his curiosity, Levi shone the penlight into the subject’s wide eyes. And then nearly dropped it in surprise.

The eyes flashed brilliantly in the darkness, throwing the light back into Levi’s face for some inexplicable reason. He stepped closer and tried again, holding a gloved hand to the struggling face to keep it still and force its eyes open. Yes, it was indeed true. The subject’s eyes reflected the light, just like a cat’s. A  _tapetum lucidum_. There was no other explanation. That thin layer of refractive crystals behind the retina that helps carnivores see in the dark by increasing the amount of light passing through it; something which was unmistakably beast, not human.

Levi swallowed, lowering the penlight as Hanji flipped the lights on again.

“Do you realize what this means?” Hanji gushed. They ran to E-05’s head and cradled it almost lovingly. “You are absolutely fabulous! You might just be the one—”

Moblit made an abortive movement to stop them. “Um, Doctor Zoë, I don’t think—”

In that moment, the subject wrenched its head to the side, spitting out the gag that it had been steadily chewing through this entire time, undetected, and sank its teeth deeply into Hanji’s arm. They only scream-laughed in what Levi perceived as excitement, not pain.

“Oh look at you, you beautiful feisty little thing! Is  _that_  the best you can do? I can barely feel it!  Show me what you’re made of, come on—”

Moblit stepped in then and wrenched Hanji away, white in the face. “Doctor Zoë! Please stop! It might be poisonous!” The whole room seemed to explode into chaos at that point, and Levi was dearly tempted to simply slam his head against the wall hard enough to make himself pass out. Jesus fucking Christ. Why did he have to be stuck on Earth with these idiots?

“Hanji,” he snapped, piercingly enough to cut through the panicked wailing from Petra and Moblit and the furious screams from the subject. “Leave,  _now_. Go with Moblit to the emergency room and do not come back until you’ve been cleared by the medical team.” He eyed the thick flow of blood that seeped out from the jagged bite wound on their forearm, winding around their arm and making a mess of the nice clean floor. “That is an order.”

“But Levi!” They swung their hand around in protest, accidentally sending a spatter of blood onto Levi’s cheek.

_Are you fucking kidding me?_

He wiped it off with exaggerated precision, the room falling deathly silent. “I swear on Saint Maria—”

Hanji’s eyes widened at the look on Levi’s face, and they deflated. “Fine. I’ll go, I’m going. Make sure you record  _everything._ ” They let out a pained cry. “I can’t believe you’re kicking me out right at the good part!”

Moblit gently took their uninjured arm and led them out of the testing room, the doors automatically locking behind them both again. Levi sagged against the table, accidentally meeting a pair of luminous green-blue eyes. E-05 perked up immediately once it felt Levi’s attention on it.

“I’m not poisonous,” it started in a rough voice, hoarse from screaming. “Have you ever heard of some guy with poison in their teeth? This is a whole new level of ridiculous if you actually believe that.”

Petra and Auruo exchanged a glance. “Should we gag it again, sir?”

Levi took a cautious step forward, keeping his eyes fixed on a point just over the brat’s shoulder. “Wait just a minute.”

The subject struggled faintly against its bonds as Levi approached, fear crawling back into its stiff muscles. “Look, my eyes? I was born with them, okay. Sometimes it happens; sometimes people are just born with a strange mutation like this. That doesn’t mean they aren’t human! Maybe our ancestors had a tapetum too, way back in our evolutionary history, and somehow this gene just got turned on in me. It doesn’t really mean anything. You’ve got to… why can’t you see that?”

Levi let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You think you’re human?  _Human?_ Brat, listen to yourself. You can’t possibly hope to fool us with some shit like this, not when we know what you really are.”

“Levi, you shouldn’t talk to—”

He spun around with a snarl. “Shut up.” Petra shrunk away from him in surprise. “Just let me do this.”

The subject licked its lips when Levi turned around again, muscles straining against the leather bonds as if it couldn’t just stay still. “I  _am_ human!”

“No. You’re not.”

“But I am! You’d think  _I_ of all people would know!” Its voice broke on an angry sob. “I may be a little different from most, but… for fuck’s sake…”

Levi slammed his hands down on either side of the prone form, a disgusted sneer curling his lips. “We have witnesses, shitty brat. You’re not in here because of your fucked up eyes. You’re in here because you’re a  _monster_ , and you and the rest of your kind need to be stopped before you pose a threat to the general public. Petra, write this down: it seems capable of fooling even itself into believing its own humanity.”

The subject seemed to freeze, then sag under some enormous weight, the fight draining out of its limbs in record timing. Levi caught sight of a steady stream of tears trickling down the subject’s cheeks, running into its hair, dripping onto the table.

“I  _am_ human,” it whispered. “My Titan form—” it choked on the words “—it’s something I can control. It’s under  _my_  will. My human will. I worked so hard—” a sob “—so h-hard to control it to prove to  _myself_ that I was human! And you’re just… You’ve got to come in here, into my life and… treat me like some kind of animal, and … and ruin  _e-every_ thing…” The rest was lost to incoherence.

Levi watched it cry for a moment, silent. Then he stepped away from the examination table and retrieved his notebook from Petra’s lax hands. He jotted down a note: ‘ _admits to its true form, self-decreed as ‘Titan form’, when subjected to emotional stress’._

Titan form, huh? Levi quite liked that term. Maybe they should adopt it.

The room was oddly quiet for another few moments, no sound but the angry, choked-back sobs emanating from the subject. Auruo was staring at Levi suspiciously, as if his thirty-two years of working with Recon would be washed away by seeing one shitty brat cry, so Levi set down his notebook and rubbed his gloved hands together.

“Well then. I think I’d like to test its pain threshold, next.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There'll probably be two more chapters to this. Happy late Halloween. The gruesome parts will come in the next part.


End file.
